How's that Best Picture Race Look Now? 'Hurt Locker' Gets a PGA Bump
But where does 'Inglourious Basterds' stand?
What film is the front runner for Oscar's Best Picture? A week ago it was certainly Avatar as it took home Best Director and Picture (Drama) at the Golden Globes, which meant The Hurt Locker was momentarily pushed to #2. However, tonight the conversation is once again thrown for a loop.
Not only did Inglourious Basterds make a name for itself last night winning the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble, but tonight the Producers Guild of America awarded The Hurt Locker producers Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicholas Chartier and Greg Shapiro with the even more-telling Darryl F. Zanuck award. The film edged out An Education, Avatar, District 9, Inglourious Basterds, Invictus, Precious, Star Trek, Up and Up in the Air for the award. Pixar's Up took home the animated feature award and The Cove won for documentary.
If you are wondering if this actually means anything, the Producer's Guild winner has gone on to win the Oscar Best Picture 13 times in the 20 years the PGA has been handing out awards. However, other than recent winners Slumdog Millionaire and No Country for Old Men, the previous three years weren't a match with Brokeback Mountain, Little Miss Sunshine and The Aviator taking home the PGA. Strangely enough, Brokeback won the same year the Oscars offered up the surprise win for Crash, a film that also won the Screen Actors Guild Best Ensemble award before winning the Oscar.
Does this mean Inglourious Basterds stands a chance? It certainly means you shouldn't count it out. Tom O'Neil, one pundit that still believes Basterds will win Best Picture (yes, I asked him less than 24 hours ago and he's sticking to his prediction), wrote up a comparison piece at Gold Derby comparing the SAG ensemble winners with the eventual Best Picture winners.
The result ended up revealing only seven of the 14 ensemble winners have gone on to win the Oscar. However, the most interesting fact is that two of those seven made for two of the biggest upsets in recent Oscar history: Shakespeare in Love and Crash.
Tom offers the following list where the Screen Actors Guild winner is listed and an * denotes those films that went on to win Best Picture:
- 2009 – Inglourious Basterds ?
- 2008 – Slumdog Millionaire *
- 2007 – No Country for Old Men *
- 2006 – Little Miss Sunshine
- 2005 – Crash *
- 2004 – Sideways
- 2003 – Lord of the Rings: Return of the King *
- 2002 – Chicago *
- 2001 – Gosford Park
- 2000 – Traffic
- 1999 – American Beauty *
- 1998 – Shakespeare in Love *
- 1997 – The Full Monty
- 1996 – The Birdcage
- 1995 – Apollo 13
Emailing back-and-forth with Tom this morning I asked him what he thought about Inglourious Basterds's chances considering the 50% chance the SAG winner has of taking Best Picture. He stuck to his guns, and reminded me both Avatar and Up in the Air weren't nominated. It's a good point considering we aren't talking about an even playing field and after all, wouldn't the edge go to the film with the better acting ensemble rather than the one that wasn't even nominated? Could that mean Avatar now falls behind both Basterds and The Hurt Locker for consideration?
All things considered, is the race for Best Picture over? Certainly not. However, there is still one major award out there to help us predict which film will take home the grand prize.
The 62nd Annual Directors Guild of America Awards Dinner will be held on Saturday, January 30, 2010. Only six times since the DGA Awards began in 1948 has the Feature Film winner not gone on to win the corresponding Academy Award, and as most Oscar followers know, the Best Director winner is considered one of the best ways to predict which film will win Best Picture. Considering Kathryn Bigelow has got to be the current front-runner (if by only the slimmest of margins) doesn't that give The Hurt Locker a small edge at the moment?
I'll be updating my Oscar predictions later this week, but for now you can check my predictions from last week right here and weigh in with your thoughts in the comments below.
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go basterds never say die as they say it ain't over til its over baby.
With 10 pictures nominated, it will be harder to predict. Will it be a quality movie or can Oscar ignore the billions AVATAR has generated? Since a "smaller" movie won last year, AVATAR just might pull it off.
It's fantastic that this year is considered a three horse race for the most coveted prize after last year was so predictable even before the nominations were announced.
I hope that it will remain this close and unpredictable up until Oscar day.
@michael butts: While I would not call Slumdog Millionaire's $377.4 million worldwide gross small, I don't see the academy awarding a film that grossed less then $15 million best picture. (Don't kid yourself into believing they don't take box office into account) Plus with the Dark Knight/Wall-E backlash from last year, I think the academy is feeling pressured to reward a "mainstream" movie best picture. Its piss poor logic (Considering people were mad that great, thought-provoking films were snubbed for "The Reader") but I think the academy is going to go with Avatar and I'll just have to be glad that at least they didn't go with Transformers 2. (Even though Cameron is getting dangerously close to Bay egoism and quality.)
Two things. I think It depends on the rest of the nominees–if there District 9 or Star Trek make it in, there might be a three way split leaving way for Inglorious Basterds or The Hurt Locker to pull through, I'm pulling for the latter.
The other thing is, I was commenting on Awards Daily last night after the PGA's and I have never seen the comments go so nasty so quickly. That's why I love this site.
I understand that you all love Inglorious Basterds very much, but I find it peculiar that after years of rightfully complaining about Harvey Weinstein buying awards, you are suddenly ok with it. Most of the SAG didn't even receive a screener for The Hurt Locker, but Harvey sent every last one of them a DVD of Inglorious Basterds. And now you all think it's Inlorious' Best Picture to lose, even though a few months ago it wasn't even above the bubble line on Brad's contenders page.
Peculiar
In my mind (if ties exist in the Oscars) I see Hurt Locker and Basterds in a tie for Best Picture, or possibly Hurt Locker and Avatar, but I honestly will DIE if Avatar wins Best Picture. If there is no tie, then I recon The Hurt Locker has the best chance of winning Best Picture, however I also really really want it to win Best Director – because it would be absolutely brilliant for Kathryn Bigelow's film to be the first to win a female Best Director. However, I do think that the Best Director and Best Picture will be 2 different films, purely because of how heated this year's Best Pic Oscar-race has been.
@Sherie: There have been ties for acting before…
I want Basterds all the way, although i fear it will make Tarantino's head explode!
But really there was not a better film this year, it was bad enough it didn't get Palme D'or at Cannes
Pro Basterds here. Finally got to see The Hurt Locker, and it is an amazing movie, I still like Basterds better. Also, someone told me about a quote from Ebert saying that he liked Avatar but doesn't think it should win best picture. Best picture should go to a movie not a phenomenon.
As of now, I think Basterds is now the favorite, because the Avatar backlash will probably hit full swing once the noms are announced. Up in the Air lost its momentum for some reason. And that leads The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds. Basterds will get the most noms so that should help its chances of the win.
Im rooting for Basterds, I dont think AVATAR can win with the new balloting. I think its The Hurt Locker vs. Inglourious Basterds. Now if Basterds takes the DGA and Hurt Locker the WGA then I will shit my pants for the oscars
I really hope avatar wins thought it was better then hurt locker and bastards.
Hurt Locker is so overrated. It's not even exciting.
With all these talk and analysis of Oscar precursors and past trends, a voice keeps echoing at the back of my mind: "2 billion dollars makes it's own rules."
The PGA's sure did cheer me up last night (after a bad date, yeesh), here's hoping The Hurt Locker trend continues. I loved IB as well, but would be fine with just a screenplay victory for Tarantino. I'm in the group that thinks that Avatar is all effects, and would be a B-Movie without them.
@The Check Spot:
I think "Up in the Air" lost momentum when "Avatar" became a phenomenon. If "Avatar" made money in the vicinity of "Sherlock Holmes" or "Alvin 2", then I don't think too many people would be talking about it as much, and "Up in the Air" would still be considered one of the frontrunners for Best Picture. Alas, "Avatar" took the world by storm and here we are, watching what will most likely be a two-movie race, with a Basterd filled wild card on the side.
@John Debono:
You bring up a good point as well. How popular is "The Hurt Locker" anyway? It ended its theatrical run (although it was re-released to little fanfare some weeks ago) and is currently on DVD. What is the lowest grossing Best Picture winner of recent, "Crash"? That was another movie that was released way before awards season & relied on DVD screeners for its eventual win. Maybe "The Hurt Locker" will play that card. Or maybe, as you say, the Academy will go with something more mainstream and popular to take the big award.
I've said it before on this website… There's no way Avatar will win an oscar for best picture or best director. The Academy does not want to see James Cameron at the podium saying he's 'King of the World' again. Especially with his stupid 'Jeff Daniels' haircut. Many members of the Academy are jewish and 'Ingolorious Basterds' is a jewish wet dream! Plus, the Academy has been aching to give a best director oscar to a woman and this year is their best chance to do that. Sorry Avatar fans.
Hey, Brad, you said in another article (in the comments section) that you might work on an article about "Reasons you liked a movie: Favorite vs. Best vs. Feel-good movie".
Can you also mention which you think the Academy prefers to reward, because I like to believe they actually BELIEVE they are rewarding the best, but sometimes, I begin to think that the Academy rewards "favorites" (Titanic), "movies with a message" (Crash), or "movies that made you feel good" (The Sound of Music).
I dont understand Avatar. The story was so predictable. Sure, the visuals were great and im hoping for Avatar to collect all the awards for Best Sound and Visual Effects but as Best Picture? i cannot accept that. The general concept of the movie wasnt bad but i would not call it a masterpiece just because people were wowed by the 3D experience.